Background tasks with react-native-background-fetch not working on iOS

I'm currently working on a project where we need to run background tasks, specifically, making periodic API calls.

After some research, I came across the react-native-background-fetch library. It worked flawlessly on Android, but I can't get it to work on iOS.

I tried forcing a test using Xcode > Debug > Simulate Background Fetch, but nothing happened. I also waited the required 15-minute interval between tasks, but the fetch never triggered (tested both on a simulator and a physical iPhone 15)

It seems like iOS has stricter limitations when it comes to background execution.

That said, what is the most common or recommended way to perform background updates on iOS and Android using React Native?

I followed the official setup instructions from the react-native-background-fetch GitHub repository for iOS.

I created a simple function that just logs a message, and called it inside a useEffect in my App.tsx:

export async function configureBackgroundFetch() {
  const status = await BackgroundFetch.configure(
    {
      minimumFetchInterval: 15,
      stopOnTerminate: false,
      startOnBoot: true,
      enableHeadless: true,
      requiredNetworkType: BackgroundFetch.NETWORK_TYPE_NONE,
    },
    async taskId => {
      const timestamp = getFormattedTime();
      console.log(
        `[BackgroundFetch] 🎯 Executed at: ${timestamp}, taskId: ${taskId}`,
      );

      // Finish the task
      BackgroundFetch.finish(taskId);
    },
    error => {
      console.warn('[BackgroundFetch] ⚠️ Error:', error);
    },
  );

  console.log('[BackgroundFetch] ✅ Status:', status);

  BackgroundFetch.start();
}

I tested this on both an iOS simulator and a physical iPhone 15.

I did receive some logs that indicate the setup was successful:

[TSBackgroundFetch load]: (
)
[TSBGAppRefreshSubscriber load]: {
    "react-native-background-fetch" = "<TSBGAppRefreshSubscriber identifier=react-native-background-fetch, executed=0, enabled=1>";
}

However, the task never seems to execute — nothing is logged from the fetch handler, even after waiting for over 15 minutes or trying Xcode > Debug > Simulate Background Fetch.

React Native: 0.76

react-native-background-fetch: 4.0.4